Gilbert went to his study; his wife had gone up to her room and had promised to come down for coffee. He went to work with all the skill which a pupil of Rahbat might be expected to display, and brewed two tiny little cups of Mocha. This he served on the table near the settee where she would sit … Then she came in.
He had been fast awakening from the dream of the morning. He was alive now. The dazement of that momentous ceremony had worn away. He rose and went a little way towards her. He would have taken her in his arms then and there, but this time the arm’s length was a reality. Her hand touched his breast, and the arm stiffened. He felt the rebuff in the act, and it seemed to him that his heart went cold, and that all the vague terrors of the previous days crystallised into one concrete and terrible truth. He knew all that she had to say before she spoke.
It was some time before she found the words she wanted, the opening was so difficult.
“Gilbert,” she said at last, “I am going to do a cowardly thing. It is only cowardly because I have not told you before.”
He motioned her to the settee.
He had woven a little romance for this moment, a dream scene which was never to be enacted. Here was the shattering.
“I won’t sit down,” she said, “I want all my strength to tell you what I have to tell you. If I hadn’t been an arrant coward I should have told you last night. I meant to tell you,” she said, “but you did not come.”
He nodded.
“I know,” he said, almost impatiently. “I could not come. I did not wish—I could not come,” he repeated.
“You know what I have to tell you?” Her eyes were steadily fixed on his. “Gilbert, I do not love you.”
He nodded again.
“I know now,” he said.
“I never have loved you,” she said in tones of despair; “there never was any time when I regarded you as more than a dear friend. But—”
She wanted to tell him why, but a sense of loyalty to her mother kept her silent. She would take all the blame, for was she not blameworthy? For she, at least, was mistress of her own soul: had she wished, she could have taken a line of greater resistance than that which she had followed.
“I married you,” she went on slowly, “because—because you are—rich—because you will be rich.”
Her voice dropped at the last word until it was husky. There was a hard fight going on within her. She wanted to tell the truth, and yet she did not want him to think so badly of her as that.
“For my money!” he repeated wonderingly.
“Yes, I—I wanted to marry a man with money. We have had—a very hard time.”
The confession came in little gasps; she had to frame every sentence before she spoke.
“You mustn’t blame mother, I was equally guilty; and I ought to have told you—I wanted to tell you.”
“I see,” he said calmly.
It is wonderful what reserves of strength come at a man’s bidding. In this terrible crisis, in this moment when the whole of his life’s happiness was shattered, when the fabric of his dream was crumbling like a house of paper, he could be judicial, almost phlegmatic.
He saw her sway, and springing to her side caught her.
“Sit down,” he said quietly.
She obeyed without protest. He settled her in the corner of the settee, pushed a cushion almost viciously behind her, and walked back to the fireplace.
“So you married me for my money,” he said, and laughed.
It was not without its amusing side, this situation.
“By Heaven, what a comedy—what a comedy!” He laughed again. “My poor child,” he said, with unaccustomed irony, “I am sorry for you, for you have secured neither husband nor money!”
She looked up at him quickly.
“Nor money,” she repeated.
There was only interest that he saw in her eyes. There was no hint of disappointment. He knew the truth, more than she had told him: it was not she who desired a fortune, it was this mother of hers, this domineering, worldly woman.
“No husband and no money,” he repeated savagely, in spite of the almost yearning desire which was in him to spare her.
“And worse than that”—with two rapid strides he was at the desk which separated them, and bent across it, leaning heavily—“not only have you no husband, and not only is there no money, but—”
He stopped as if he had been shot.
The girl, looking at him, saw his face go drawn and grey, saw the eyes staring wildly past her, the mouth open in tragic dismay. She got up quickly.
“What is it? What is it?” she whispered in alarm.
“My God!”
His voice was cracked; it was the voice of a man in terror. She half bent her head, listening. From somewhere beneath the window arose the soft, melancholy strains of a violin. The music rose and fell, sobbing and pulsating with passion beneath the magic of the player’s fingers. She stepped to a window and looked out. On the edge of the pavement a girl was playing, a girl whose poverty of dress did not hide her singular beauty.
The light from the street lamp fell upon her pale face, her eyes were fixed on the window where Gilbert was standing.
Edith looked at her husband. He was shaking like a man with fever.
“The ‘Melody in F,’ ” he whispered. “My God! The ‘Melody in F’—and on my wedding day!”
V
The Man Who Desired Wealth
Leslie Frankfort was one of a group of three who stood in the inner office of Messrs. Warrell & Bird before a huge safe. There was plenty to attract and hold their attention, for the floor was littered with tools of every shape and description.
The safe itself bore evidence of a determined assault. A semicircle of
